


An Exercise in Human Anatomy

by Cyphomandra



Category: Stardew Valley (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, Femslash, Getting Together, Life Drawing, terrible ex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-08
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-13 14:29:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29279994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cyphomandra/pseuds/Cyphomandra
Summary: Leah needs a model.
Relationships: Haley/Leah (Stardew Valley)
Comments: 9
Kudos: 27
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 6





	An Exercise in Human Anatomy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mimosa-supernova (FourCatProductions)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FourCatProductions/gifts).



> Thanks so much to my heroic beta! For the purposes of this story please assume the new farmer is having a torrid affair with someone not explicitly in this fic :D

“Her expression is intentionally unclear.” Leah gestured towards her first sculpture, trying to ignore her jitters. It was more than time to put her art out in public. She fixed her gaze on the work, too nervous to try to read the faces of the gathered villagers, and tried to think what to say next.

Gray stone, a woman standing on a plinth with her arms folded but in motion, one foot lifting forward. Purposeful rather than seductive; naked rather than nude. 

Behind the statue Leah caught a glimpse of blonde hair. Her stomach dipped.

***

Oh, Haley can pose for you instead, Emily had said, when Leah turned up at the agreed time and found Emily wrestling with her sewing machine and what looked like a full suit of armour. Scraps of leather and snips of wire littered the floor. “Haaaaley!”

Haley came out of the kitchen with a cupcake and a disgruntled expression. “What?”

“Plate," Emily said sternly. 

Haley rolled her eyes, but went back for one before coming back. “Fine. What?”

“That favour you owe me. I’m calling it in. Leah needs a model.” Emily jerked her head towards where Leah was standing with her satchel and sketchpad. 

_But I didn’t want someone pretty,_ Leah opened her mouth to say, and then stopped herself just before she managed to offend both of them. She could imagine Kel shaking her head in disapproval at Leah’s usual thoughtlessness.

Haley, in the meantime, was studying Leah, her face screwed up in a scowl. “You won’t paint me with three eyes and a nose sticking out the side of my head.”

“I sculpt,” Leah said. “But,” she added, as Haley’s eyes narrowed, “this is really just preliminary sketching. I haven't sculpted a person in a really long time, and I’m pretty rusty.”

(”If you’re so determined to do art, why not something conceptual?” Kel said, in that first month after Leah moved into her apartment and seemed to be constantly apologising for her possessions - too much, not enough, in the wrong place, the wrong sort entirely - Kel’s gaze lingered on a clay maquette of a snail that Leah had been working on, and one corner of her mouth turned down. “Less accessible.”

So Leah had murmured agreement, wanting to be the sort of brilliant, difficult artist Kel would approve of. She pinned a postcard of Hepworth’s _Pendour_ over her tiny workspace, where she could lose herself in the smooth curves and the way the light played on the piece’s hollows, and tried again. Failed again, because what Kel really wanted was for Leah not to do art at all.)

Haley sighed. “Sure. Whatever.”

“Fantastic!” Emily chirped. “Can’t wait to see your work!” She pushed a lever, and the sewing machine began buzzing and grinding at the armour.

“My place?” Leah had to shout over the noise. Haley gave a bored shrug. Leah, already regretting it, pushed the door open.

By the time they reached the cabin Leah was feeling slightly better about the whole thing. It was a spring day, after all, with a breeze that lifted petals from the late-blossoming fruit trees, and even if the flowers soon settled on the ground the scent of them lingered in the warm air. Haley followed ‘Leah with a face like a thundercloud, picking her way past the puddles from yesterday’s rain in an impractical pair of dainty pink shoes with white bows at the ankles. 

Sunlight glinted off the river as Leah dug in her pockets for her door key.

“You lock it.”

Leah shrugged. “City habit, I guess.” She beckoned for Haley to follow her in, and went over to her work area, automatically checking the light. “Do you want a coffee?”

Haley’s heels clicked on the floorboards as she stepped over to the open space between Leah’s easel and the bed. She folded her arms and glanced up . “Can’t we just get this over with?”

“Sure.” Leah fumbled at her satchel, a little startled. Pencils and sketchpad located, she bent down to retrieve her timer from the shelf. “I’ll set it for five minutes at first. Hold the same pose until it rings, then switch.”

Haley was chewing her lip, the first hint Leah had that she might not be as certain as she appeared. When Haley saw Leah watching her she glared back, her whole body stiffening. 

Perhaps not the best start. Leah sketched an oval for the head, adding a few lines to indicate the levels of the eyes and nose, and then, as Haley showed no signs of softening, a few rigid angles for her shoulders and back.

The timer rang. Haley rotated through ninety degrees and gave the window on the far wall the full benefit of her glare. 

Leah sighed - inwardly - and tried to get something of Haley’s profile on to the page .

The back view at least got Leah the chance to try to capture the folds of Haley’s dress as it hung around her legs, but when Haley kept rotating, Leah found herself drawing a neat stack of rectangles, and adding eyelashes and a few long curls to the top one. It was hardly what she’d hoped for.

“One more after this.” Leah tried to sound enthusiastic. “You’ve been fantastic, but you must be getting tired.”

Maybe she could ask Robin - they’d had conversations about wood carving before, and Robin had least had a grasp of aesthetics. As long as Demetrius didn’t get weirdly possessive, the way he sometimes did on Friday nights at the saloon. She could use a mirror, but something inside Leah shied away from the thought of that much self-contemplating.

The timer buzzed. Haley, facing Leah again, arms folded, didn’t rotate. Instead, she shifted position subtly, moving her shoulder back and tilting her face towards the sunlight to throw one cheekbone into high relief, lengthening her neck into a elegant line that invited anyone watching to follow it down over her torso…

Leah swept her whole arm down with her pencil, trying to capture that enticing line, drawing it down; hinting at the curve of Haley’s breast under her dress, down towards the leg and the arch of her foot in those frivolous shoes. She wished momentarily that Haley had worn something more revealing, and the thought had a pleasant frisson that urged her on to do better.

She flickered her gaze back to Haley’s face, and for a second Haley’s blue eyes met hers, intense in a way Leah had never seen before. Leah’s pencil froze on the page.

“Are we done?” Haley’s eyes were opaque again, her body rigid and closed in.

It was like having a door slammed in her face. “That’s fine.” Leah put down her sketchpad and swung her arm around a few times to loosen it up.

“See you around.” Haley already had her hand on the door.

(“Who’d model for you anyway?" Kel said in Leah’s head).

Leah swallowed. She had to get past those memories. “Would you - would you pose for me again sometime?”

She didn’t expect Haley to say yes. But Leah had to ask.

Haley glanced back over one shoulder. “Don’t you want Emily?” Every part of her radiated disinterest, the flash of intensity gone as if it had never been there.

“I’d like to keep drawing you,” Leah said firmly. “When you’re free.”

Haley rolled her eyes. “As if there’s ever anything to do in this town.” The door banged shut behind her.

Leah pottered around her studio for a bit, picking up sketches and putting them down again, digging into a lump of clay with one fingernail to gouge out a savage curve. Eventually she went back to her sketchpad and her last drawing.

It wasn’t right. She’d drawn the head too hastily, relying too much on what she’d done before rather than what was there, and Haley’s hip was off as well. But there was something there, pulling Leah in. She snagged her stool with her free hand, scraping it along the floor towards her and sat down to work.

***

Four days later Leah was coming out of Pierre’s with her weekly groceries as Haley was heading up the side path. When Leah greeted her with a cheerful “Hello”, Haley flipped up her sunglasses and said, “Ugh. I could maybe do an hour now but then I have to meet Alex.”

Leah wished she’d had her sketchbook with her; maybe Haley would be more relaxed outdoors. “Great,” Leah said, anyway, and took Haley back to her cottage where Haley stomped over to the exact place she’d stood in last time, with the identical stiff position.

Leah put her groceries down on the table. “How about you sit down this time? Just stay in one pose, if you can.”

Haley perched upright on the stool with her skirts tucked in around her and a fixed smile on her face. It worked a little better, but Leah found herself adding a frilly hat and an advancing spider to her first sketch, and had to turn to a fresh page quickly before she turned the stool into a tuffet to complete the picture. Maybe if she just did Haley’s head…

Even though she tried as hard as she could, Leah couldn’t make Haley’s face look anything other than bland. If she were a better artist, maybe she could bring out hidden depths or at least a sense of something below the surface, and if she were a better person maybe Haley would actually want to show her… Leah set her sketchpad down.

“Coffee?”

Haley gave her a half-shrug. Leah went ahead and made two cups anyway. She could hear Haley getting up and moving around; when she turned, Haley was studying the clutch of wooden sculptures in the corner of Leah’s room. Her hair was hanging down, and Leah couldn’t see her face.

“Wooden sculptures 1, 2 and 3.” Leah held out the spare coffee. “I’m terrible at names.”

Haley straightened and took the cup. “Are you planning on carving me in wood?” She sipped her coffee, her blue eyes on Leah’s face.

Now there was something there - Leah’s fingers itched for a pencil.

“I’m not sure yet,” Leah hedged. She wasn’t going to tell anyone that she’d phoned her supplier back in Zuzu City for a quote on a sizeable chunk of Grebe marble. Not yet.

Haley nodded. “Figures. I knew I sucked.”

“What? No.” Leah stared at her.

“I tried modelling when I was a teenager. Everyone was ‘oh, you’re so pretty Haley, you could be famous.’” Haley put her coffee down. “But on the page I look like a dead fish wearing lipstick.”

She sounded resigned, but Leah thought she could hear hurt behind that. “Did you want to model?”

“I wanted people to see me,” Haley snapped, and the fire was back in her eyes again. “But when they look at me - I don’t know. It’s like they’re seeing something totally different.”

Leah knew about failing to meet other people’s expectations. In the end, she’d had to pick what she was, rather than what someone else wanted her to be.

“Emily said you’d talked to her about inner beauty and essences and translating the spiritual into physical forms.”

Leah did have a hazy memory of saying something like that, after Emily had persuaded her to come along to the Tuesday aerobics class, and something about the room, the exercise, and the terrible fashions everyone else had shown up in had somehow inspired Leah to talk to Emily about her own art. Conversations with Emily did often veer towards the metaphysical. She opened her mouth, but Haley was still talking.

“I made a deal with her that I could pose for you, and now I’m on dishes for another month.” Haley scowled. “So much for my inner essence.”

“You do have -“ Leah waved an arm. “Inner beauty. Hidden depths. Whatever.”

Haley looked dubious. “Sure. Way, way down. Maybe my appendix.”

“No.” Leah, exasperated, pivoted on one heel and strode over to where she’d left the sketchbook. She flicked through the last few pages and then spun it around to thrust it at Haley. She’d revised the sketch as much as she could while still preserving the energy and tension of that original line, keeping the face more of a suggestion and subtracting the clothes.

Haley stared at it.

“That’s you.” Leah put a finger on the drawing, brushing lightly over it. “For just a moment, at the end of the first session. I don’t know what happened or what you were thinking, but you stopped being a - a dead fish - ”

A red flush crept inexorably down Haley’s face and onto the delicate skin of her neck. 

Leah stopped. “I’m sorry! I say the most tactless things.”

“Do you want to know what I was thinking about?” Blue eyes met Leah’s; no longer opaque, but as deep and full as the sea. “You. You were so focussed, and so talented, and - hot. I thought, maybe, this time… But you didn’t want me. Just someone to draw.”

Oh. Leah put the sketchpad down carefully. “Actually.” She lifted her drawing hand, watching Haley the entire time, and let one finger touch the skin over Haley’s left cheekbone, the warmth of it shockingly intimate. She traced a line down and onto Haley’s jaw, pressing just a touch more firmly, and then down onto her neck, and the still flushed skin of her chest. Haley’s breasts rose and fell in the tight bodice of her dress, her breaths quickening, and her pupils were huge. 

“How about both?” Leah said, and leaned in slowly, giving Haley every chance to pull back; but Haley met her halfway, her mouth sure and sweet.

***

“Thanks to everyone for coming.” Leah’s smile held a mix of relief and gratitude. A pattering of applause came from the surrounding villagers.

Mayor Lewis came over. “Fantastic work, Leah.” He rubbed at his moustache. “Sure you’re not selling this one?” He nodded at the gray figure. “She’s quite a beauty. Asset to the village.”

Leah shook her head. Lewis sighed, theatrically, and raised his voice to call out to the villagers for bids on the the other pieces. Leah edged backwards out of the immediate focus of attention.

“You could sell it,” Haley said in her ear. “I told you no-one would recognise me. My legs aren’t really that long, for a start.”

“It has sentimental value.” Leah tucked one hand in her girlfriend’s arm and squeezed. Haley had talked her into putting it on display, and then nearly given Leah a heart attack by standing next to it, but she’d been right. “And are you sure? Maybe I should check again.”

Haley’s mouth quirked up a little - almost unnoticeable, especially to those who only looked at the surface - but Leah saw.

THE END.


End file.
